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The Christian, the Jew, the kafir; the American, the Westerner, the educated, the open-minded. The female, the gay man. The “apostate” Muslim whose branch of Islam is different from what you fervently believe.

Yourself, maybe, if in possession of even a wisp of humility and self-awareness.

At the very least, we know — learned in the very early aftermath of the slaughter in Orlando, city of make-believe theme parks and family holidays — Omar Mateen hated men who loved men.

The deviant infidels.

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The slain mass-murderer — kill a half hundred, pay for it with one worthless life — felt repugnance for homosexuals. This was disclosed by his own father, in part as an explanation for what unfolded at a gay nightclub in the small hours of Sunday morning, but also as a sort of disclaimer, a preventive deflection of any potential hostility expressed towards the Muslim faith, towards radicalized terrorists of the Muslim faith.

Better to be taken for a maniacal homophobe than a murderous Muslim, as if the twain never shall meet.

It was those deviant kissing men who purportedly lit the fuse on his son’s incendiary temper — the indignation, the righteous ire that triggered the worst ever “domestic” attack on U.S. soil, if domestic is an adjective that will stick in the coming days.

“We were in downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music,” Seddique Mateen told media on Sunday, collecting the dots that apparently made discursive sense to him, amidst everything that was not making sense on the morning after unspeakable horror.

“And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry,” the father continued. “They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said: ‘Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that.’”

Except there is no wife, only an ex-wife, and she’s claimed her former spouse, while never proclaiming any sympathy for religious terrorism, certainly made his virulent antipathy for homosexuals known well enough.

The father continued:

“And then we were in the men’s bathroom and men were kissing each other.”

Oh yes, touch them all, every stereotype, every filament of exculpation when you’re the Afghan-born father of a 29-year-old mass shooter, born and raised in the U.S., a son who skulks into a gay nightclub — a place of God-shaming hedonism, Mateen doubtless thought to himself, and he the virtuous avenger, a martyr to Muslim piety — packing an assault rifle, a handgun and some other type of explosive device not yet confirmed by police.

Walk into a happy, gay — the old-fashioned use of that word — social place at 2 o’clock in the morning, Latin music playing in the front, reggae out on the patio, and light up the place with gunfire, cut the night with bullets. Spray gunfire.

Men and women, at first not comprehending, then flinging themselves out of the way of a predator, a large group seeking refuge in a bathroom when they apparently couldn’t get out without exposing themselves to gunfire. But there was no safety there and no mercy, as Mateen stalked them there, too, and took them hostage.

Hostages are for the purpose of negotiation, so maybe Mateen wasn’t entirely resigned to martyrdom after driving for an hour and 45 minutes from his home outside Port St. Lucie in a rented car. On a mission, though. A mission he undertook with cold-blooded forethought and organization, not a disorganized mind, as shots fired were first reported at 2:02 a.m., heard by a police officer working security at the club.

The two men had a brief encounter, followed by three tense hours of not knowing what would happen next for the survivors, and those who would not survive when the smoke cleared. One woman apparently covered herself with dead bodies to hide from the shooter.

There was a three-hour standoff and, as reported by journalists who gathered bits of information on Sunday, some negotiation with responding law enforcement. But at 5 a.m., a SWAT team, worried about those still alive inside, made the decision to blast through an outer wall with an armored vehicle, and a furious gun battle ensued.

“I saw this kid fall and I yelled: ‘What are you doing? Get up!’” Luis Barbano told CNN. “I saw he had a bullet wound in his arm and side. So I ripped my shirt to make a tourniquet and stop the bleeding. He was from Jacksonville, so I was talking to him, trying to keep him awake.

“I saw another guy and he was trying to get back in to look for his friend. He had, I kid you not, a bullet sticking out of him. So I ripped my shirt again. Then we were told to get away from there.”

This is the world we live in now, when loathing and malice can strike anytime, anywhere: an elementary school, a fast-food restaurant, a mall, an office workplace, a church, a theatre, during a live TV interview, a dance club. Gunmen with grievances, nursing their grudges, stoking their bitterness, with nothing left to distinguish their existence except the manner in which they forfeit it and how many innocent lives they can take with them.

And those others, as we’ve seen too often, who align themselves with the radical fringe of a nihilistic terror entity, radicalized from afar, on the Internet, by trolling the websites where the monsters groom their acolytes. Inspired.

Mateen was a licensed court security guard by profession, some nine years employed by a private security firm, so it was even easier for him to arm up, walk into a gun store and pick out his killing tools of choice. He knew how to reload, how to fire, how to inflict the widest havoc.

At least twice, as reported yesterday, he’d been on the national security radar and interrogated — reported to authorities for wild statements he’d made, allegedly supportive of Daesh — yet the trail meandered into nothingness. “Those interviews turned out to be inconclusive, so there was nothing to keep the investigation going,” said Assistant Special Agent Ronald Hopper. Mateem was not under investigation any longer; not under surveillance, no monitoring.

And yet again, the easy access to guns, my God the guns, war-grade weapons that should never be sold to civilians — but America has shown little sensible response to the scourge from within.

Mateen, according to his family, was not an observant Muslim. But parents, we’ve seen, know so little of their children’s leanings, their ideological affiliations. How little we believe them when they profess ignorance.

The son they claim to have known as non-violent — “merely” anti-gay — called 9-1-1, according to reports, just before activating his plan and pledged allegiance to ISIS, the Islamic State, Daesh, whatever damn name we’re giving them, to open up space between terrorism and Islam, as if there’s only a superficial conjoining there.

Forty-nine innocents murdered, at least 53 wounded, dozens of them undergoing emergency surgery on Sunday. Parents and friends descended on the scene, desperate to find information about those missing, people unaccounted for in the hospitals, being counted instead at the morgue — amid a wail of agony as their identities began to be confirmed.

A lone gunman, but not necessarily isolated in his hatred; a specific group targeted.

“We know enough to say this was an act of terror and an act of hate,” said President Barack Obama, who’s long been so cautious about using the latter term, when he addressed the nation from the White House.

How many times, in his eight years in the Oval House, has the president attempted to bind his nation’s wounds?

“Today as Americans we grieve the brutal murder, the horrific massacre of dozens of innocent people.”

This is where we live now, in a world mutating under the thrall of terror.

And this is where we die now, at a gay nightclub in Walt Disney Orlando.

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